In his own words: Phil Parkinson post-Coventry City

Read the manager's thoughts following the Whites' late draw at the Ricoh Arena on Monday afternoon

Phil Parkinson offered up his thoughts following his side’s draw with Coventry City on Monday afternoon.

Despite falling behind on two occasions in the game, a Zach Clough penalty and injury-time Max Clayton leveller ensured that the spoils were shared come full time.

And speaking following the final whistle, the manager covered the following points…

On the character shown by his side to level late on…
We were very pleased to get back in the game. There’s been a few occasions this season where we’ve been 1-0 down away from home but haven’t been able to get back into it.

We knew today that we had to break that cycle. In fairness to us, as a team, we’ve not been behind on too many occasions, but we needed a real urgency to get back into the game today and we had that.

We got back into it with our first goal, but we were very disappointed with the second goal we conceded. It’s very unlike us to concede easy goals like we did today, but we drove on and got back into it through a terrific goal from Max Clayton.

Seven points from nine over the Christmas period is a good return for us though. When you get six from the first two games, you always get greedy and want nine, but we’d have settled for seven prior to the start of it.

Today though, it was always going to be tough being our second game in three days, but the lads gave their everything to get us a share of the points.

On Max Clayton’s goal…
That was a massive highlight of the day for us. Max will take the headlines and deservedly so, but everyone in the dressing room is delighted for him.

It’s been a long road back for him, but he’s got quality and calmness in key moments which he’s shown throughout his career to date. We’re all hugely pleased for him.

On scoring another late goal after Saturday’s injury time winner over Scunthorpe…
We’ve got to show that we’ve got that ability and quality about us, especially on our travels. We would have loved to have got the winner right at the end when Gary Madine nearly scored, but we’ll take the point.

I’m sure the supporters will be like me though – not deliriously happy, but reasonably content with our points return over Christmas and they’ll have also seen some real moments of quality today.

On the composure shown by Zach Clough from the penalty spot…
It was a real moment of quality from him. it was a difficult pitch today and in the first half, we huffed and puffed without too much quality on the ball as a team.

In the second half meanwhile, we proved our worth as a team again. On the whole, we were disappointed with the goals we conceded, but the character of the lads cannot be questioned.

On the backing of the club’s supporters…
They were absolutely fantastic once again. Looking back to the Chesterfield game, there was too much of an acceptance surrounding the defeat and it was important that we showed our supporters today that it wasn’t going to happen again.

And finally, looking ahead to Saturday’s Emirates FA Cup tie against Crystal Palace…
This result sets us up well for that game. When the draw came out, we said to the lads that we need to get to that game in the strongest possible league position and we’ve done that.

Now, we can enjoy the extra exposure of the FA Cup alongside enjoy the game and test ourselves against a very good team with no real pressure on ourselves apart from playing well and maintaining our performance levels.

We will go in as underdogs, but we’ll give everything we’ve got and see if we can get to Round Four.

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